In spite of the deceivingly good ratings, the book explains something very simple in too many words. Even though I had no knowledge of ASP (but had good knowledge about programming), I found the slow, repetitive, hand-holding approach an insult to my intelligence. Reading/digesting this book isn't challenging at all. Rather, I had to page through all the wordy pages to find the little information to add to my knowledge. If you have basic understanding of programming of any kind, don't waste your money/time on hundreds of pages explaning what is a "variable", how if/for/while control structures work, what are objects/properties/methods... Instead, buy/read Wrox's Professional ASP 3.0 or ASP Programmer's Reference. They will return you 100 times as much knowledge and confidence as this book. Also, the bad grammar/writing style, typos, and careless errors in code are intolerable... Go to the wrox website to download all the code for this book, try them out with your browser. That's all that the book gives you. No need to read the 1200 pages. The code is all free. That's my sincere advice to ASP learners of at least average intelligence.

Good but wordy

Rating: 4/5

Like most Wrox books I've read, this book contains lots of easily understandable information, but it is not as concise as it could be. Still, I learned to use ASP from this book and I recommend it.

I have done a little Visual Basic and HTML coding, and to me this book seemed too basic in parts. The first part of the book is about how the server deals with HTML and about VBscript. The book doesn't really get into ASP until about page 170.

The examples are usually short, which is good. Too bad the examples are not more self-contained. The authors too often illustrate a new point by saying "use the code in the previous example, but with the following changes..." That's just lazy. A complete new code listing for each new topic would have been more helpful.

If you are a beginner and you don't mind wading through a lot of words (1000+ pages worth) and a somewhat boring book design, get this book. It will teach you a lot.

If you are a very experienced developer, this book will be too basic - look elsewhere (the Wrox book Professional Active Server Pages 3.0 seems popular with reviewers on Amazon).

One of the best introductory books ever

Rating: 5/5

This text is so packed with information, it even goes beyond asp and introduces XML and COM+....so well written, so concise, publishers throughtout the country need to learn from wrox' writers on how to do technical books right! Every bit of code is explained in great detail, and while there are some errors, the website covers nearly all of them. Case in point: I won't be selling my copy back!